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A Bonnie-Shaped Space
is a spoof of Wendy Mass's novel A Mango-Shaped Space. Prologue Freak. FREAK. I'll never forget when I first heard the word, that day at the whiteboard. It was five years ago, when I was eight; if you're bad at math like me, I'm thirteen now. Anyway, I was trying to figure out how to multiply twenty-four times nine, and there were five minutes left in class. I kept thinking that maybe the bell would ring before I could finish, no one would know that I couldn't solve the problem. I stared at the problem and noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple of colored markers on the ledge of the whiteboard. I erased the 2 and began to rewrite it in its correct color. "Ms. Henson!" My teacher startled me. I turned around, capping the marker. The click made a small gray spark on the corner of my vision. "This isn't art class," she said. Like I didn't know! "Just use the black marker." "But wouldn't it be easier to do in the right colors?" I asked, and the class laughed. I thought they were laughing at her, not me, but apparently I was wrong. "What do you mean, the right colors?" she asked. "Numbers don't have colors, they simply have a shape and a numerical value — that's all." "But they have all those things," I said. "This is nonsense," the teacher replied, irate. "Are you going to finish the problem?" I shook my head slightly. Someone threw a paper airplane across the room. Were they kidding? Of course numbers had colors. Let me guess, they were going to tell me that sounds and letters didn't have colors either, that the letter a'' wasn't red like a tomato and clicking markers didn't make little gray sparks? The teacher sent me to the principal, who left me in the hands of my parents. They brought me home and I sulked about how unfair it was. Pretty soon, everyone forgot that happened — everyone except for me. I learned to never mention that again, but now I'm thirteen, and I just might have to give my secret away. Chapter One "''A is for Amy who fell down the stairs," my best friend Isabella Garcia-Shapiro says to me. We're sitting on the edge of my porch, swinging our legs back and forth. "B is for Basil, assaulted by bears," I reply, continuing the creepy rhyme we memorized off the poster in my bedroom. I like the poster because to everyone else it's black and white, but in my head, it's in color. "Can it get any hotter?" Isabella asks, wiping her forehead. "I don't think so," I reply. At age thirteen, Isabella and I are way too old for day camp. We usually spend our summers looking through the woods, but we've found nothing interesting lately. When we were younger, we used to pretend that this ravine, which was extremely dry during the summer, would take us to somewhere magical, like Narnia. Sometimes I still catch Isabella looking behind doors in search of secret worlds. Her mother died three years ago from some kind of cancer that only women can get. Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro bought us the friendship rope bracelets that still hang around our wrists, and every time my mom begs me to cut it off, I remind her of who bought it. The wind kicks up and a leaf sticks to my leg. I count to thirteen before it falls to the ground. The leaf, which is a bright shade of green with yellow highlights, is nothing close to Isabella's name, which is a baby pink. I think part of why I warmed up to Isabella so fast is that I like the color of her name. But I'd never tell her that, nor would I tell my older sister Isabelle that her name is nearly the same color. She'd probably slap me; she hates pink. Isabelle is sixteen and in the process of driving our parents insane. She changes her hair color weekly. We used to be a lot closer, before she ran off to high school and dropped me like a hot potato. Before she went to California for the summer, she told me the boys would pay much more attention to me if I colored my hair blonde. I told her no thanks, and that I would stick with being a normal old brunette. The only natural blonde in our family is Dirk. He just turned eleven, and he can tell you how many McDonald's hamburgers he's eaten in his entire lifetime. He has a chart on his wall. The paper ran a story about it once. Looking down at my feet, I notice my shoes are untied. I stop walking, take them off, tie the laces together, and drape them over my shoulder. I prefer being barefoot anyway. Isabella starts to say something when her words are drowned out by a loud whirring noise. My vision fills with black and gray slashes, and I look up to see my father in his helicopter. He sells and fixes small farm equipment and uses the copter to get to out of reach places. We wave, but I don't think he sees us. "Don't you ever get scared to fly in that thing?" Isabella asks me. "It looks like it's going to fall apart, that helicopter." "It's fun," I reply. "It feels like you're a bird up there. You can see everything. It's amazing. You should come sometime." Isabella pales. "No thanks." She has never accepted my offer any time I've asked her. "So have you visited the cemetery yet?" she asks as we continue to walk. "No, not yet. I still have to complete the painting." It was Isabella's idea that I give my grandfather a gift on the one-year anniversary of his death. She does the same with her mom, and in return, her mother gives her gifts... sort of. When Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro knew she wasn't going to be living much longer, she stocked up on presents and wrote long letters about her life to Isabella. She gave all this to my mom, and each year on Isabella's birthday, my mother sends her one of the gifts and the corresponding letter. One of these years the gifts are going to run out and that will be a very sad birthday indeed. "Can I see the painting?" Isabella asks, even though she knows better. "You know I'd never show you. It's bad luck to show it before it's done." "Why are you so superstitious?" she asks me, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "I thought Dirk's crazy beliefs drove you mental." "They do!" I insist. "I'm not half as bad as he is. If a black cat crosses his path, he'll stay locked in his room for the rest of the day. And you can just forget walking under ladders. If he catches our dad doing it, he makes him walk around the house backward... twice. Dirk says that if Dad wanted to really make sure he undid his bad luck, he should cross his fingers until he sees a dog." "You don't have a dog." "I know." "And what's up with the ladders?" I shrug, pushing my hair off my face. "Dunno, but you don't want to walk underneath one." "There sure is a lot of oddity in your family," Isabella says. She doesn't even know about my own personal brand of weirdness. Like everyone else, she forgot about that day in third grade, which is ducky with me. Category:Fanon Works Category:Che's Articles Category:Spoofs